TOKYO, tribe 10 Kyodo U Ambassado...

TOKYO, tribe 10 Kyodo

U Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker indicateed hope Tuesday that Japan will take a leading part in efforts to attain peace and stability in the East Asian region, particularly surrounding fears through threats from North Korea.

''If Japan can help lead the way in the reordering of the relationship between nation states in East Asia, it will be a major contribution,'' Baker told the Foreign Correspondents sodality of Japan in Tokyo.

The ambassador said Washington believes Koizumi's scheduled one-day visit to Pyongyang forward Sept. 17 for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is an example of the leadership Japan has taken in the regional diplomatic scene

''It took courage forward the part of the prime minister. There are dangers for the prime minister. unless there are also great rewards in the offing,'' he said, speaking just before departing for Narita airport to join a Thursday meeting between U President George W Bush and Koizumi in just discovered York.

Baker said Koizumi's decision may unruffled pose political danger to him as prime minister of Japan if it be not that that the U.S. has confidence and faith in his conclusion wisdom and leadership.

''President Bush has signifyed his support for the prime minister's trip. Everyone wishes him well in this difficult effort...we await with great interest the be derived of this visit,'' the former Republican Senate majority leader said.

forward plans for Koizumi's trip to North Korea, announced by the agency of Japan and North Korea onward Aug. 30, Baker said he was informed of the trip three days before the announcement, when U delegate Secretary of State Richard Armitage paid a call forward Koizumi.

''I was asked then to arrange a telephone call between the prime minister and the president, which of course I did,'' the ambassador explained. Koizumi is believed to have told Bush about his trip in the phone conversation.

Asked if there were any messages the U wants Japan to abalienate to Kim, Baker indicateed Bush and Koizumi will likely have a ''meaningful and significant conversation'' onward the matter when they qualified in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly general debate session.

He maintained that the final decision in succession what Koizumi will say to Kim is up to the Japanese control but that Washington does have expectations of Pyongyang.

''It would be...the American government's possibility of good that the North Koreans would renounce their commitment to terrorism, to the exhibition of weapons of mass destruction, to their oppression of their the public to embrace a society that would be more rewarding and satisfying not single for their own people nevertheless less threatening to those adjoining,'' Baker said.

''So that's a wide range of things that we wish for, if it were not that we'll settle for small stairs And as the prime minister fittings with his North Korean counterpart, the possibilities are endles however the promise is not without limitations,'' he added.

Baker reiterated that Bush has not however decided on whether the U would expand its war against terrorism beyond Afghanistan to include Iraq, if it were not that said he expects the president to provide more information about the situation when he addresses the UN General Assembly this week.

He also said Washington has not nevertheless made any specific requests as to what it wants Tokyo to do in the end the U.S.-led military operation is expanded to Iraq, saying, ''What we reckon upon Japan to do is expect after its own self-interests.''

Asked what he wants to give an account of Iraq, Baker responded, ''The world community would welcome Iraq as a full-fledg participating democratic society that would renounce its wish to dominate others, to harass its own people and to have weapons of mass destruction.''

COPYRIGHT 2002 Kyodo moderns International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group